Walking on Ice (ongoing) exhibit

This past summer Nazli Ozerdem (Brown-RISD Dual Degree '14) and Matt Block (Brown '13) were awarded a Brown International Scholars Program fellowship to go to Iceland and conduct research for their collaborative audio-visual exhibition. Their research consisted of two different components. They worked with local artists and learned their approaches to music and art, and documented Iceland's natural phenomena such as glaciers, geysers, boiling mud pots, and geothermal vents. The theme behind this collaboration is the use of landscape and traditional elements of Icelandic culture to generate a contemporary work. Their goal was to create a space that unifies visual art and music that will serve as a symbol for the cross-cultural relationships that they established during their time in Iceland. They hope that this multi-sensory understanding of Icelandic culture will create a place for their community to engage with art that found its roots in Iceland and its continued growth at Brown and RISD.

The music composed by Matt Block consists of four pieces based on Icelandic folk themes, and it will be performed live on April 6 at the opening. These works convey a story of discovery and growth. The compositions are orchestrated for a ten-piece ensemble that includes flute, bass clarinet, alto/soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, trumpet/flugelhorn, violin, cello, bass, piano, and percussion. In addition to the acoustic music, there is sound design for the space primarily generated from natural found sounds.

The visual work by Nazli Ozerdem consists of large-scale drawings and digital photographs of the Icelandic landscape.The drawings integrate patterns from traditional Icelandic objects from museums such as the Icelandic Museum of National History, the Arbaer Museum, and the Open-Air Folk Museum. Nazli allowed each drawing to grow and change organically and worked with the existing photographs instead of working against them.